


New in Town

by Berguba



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), 機神咆吼デモンベイン | Kishin Houkou Demonbane
Genre: Academic Work (in universe), Crack Crossover, Crossover, Feat: John Mulaney As The Riddler, Like When I know What to Tag this, Maybe more content warnings later too, Mental Institutions, More tags later, Multiversal Crossover, Prologue to MORE Chapters, mental health
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-03-29 18:20:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19025344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berguba/pseuds/Berguba
Summary: What if we put the Riddler (and the other Riddler) into Arkham... City? As described in... Demonbane? Takes place post Kishin houkou, but well pre-Kishin hishou. Kurou is currently doing graduate stuff for Miskatonic, is roughly how far the timeline has progressed since the "That Cannot Be Allowed" ending. I'm choosing to make the current year 2017 for numbers reasons.





	1. Riddle The First

**Author's Note:**

> M: HEY, I HAVE AN IDEA.  
> N: OH YEAH?  
> M: HOW FUNNY WOULD IT BE, KISHI, IF I DID THIS?  
> N: I DOUBT I COULD CONVINCE YOU NOT TO.
> 
> -Recovered from the observation journal of Conleth Blaecleah.

What institution gets more and more students every year, yet none ever graduate?

  
Arkham Asylum. Unwell, here I am again. Which is describably _odd,_ given the last thing I remember I was reading, in a library, in a public section, in a comfortable chair, a book I was considering checking out (namely, _The Liar’s Manual_ , a book I’m quite certain I would have heard of before, given the quality, title, and what I can recall of the contents.) and, so far as I can remember, not wanted for any crimes, sane, mad or in between. So, how to explain the stiff, _boring_ bed, the scratchy, bland, _boring_ clothes, the blank, white, windowless, _boring_ walls, and the locked door, featuring returning all-stars “pill slot” and “observation window.”

  
Think, Nygma, think, why would you lose time, and wake up in Arkham? Had Scarecrow been planning to rob the library? Wait, no, let’s not bring anything outside the situation into the situation until the internals of the situation prove to be insufficient to explain the situation. Let’s work from the center out. Body: no known drugs in my system, and I ate breakfast from somewhere I can trust, so the likelihood of the cause being inside me is low. Clothes: mine, freshly washed, so that’s off. Chair: at a public library, thus unlikely to-

  
“Mister, uh, Nygma?”

  
“Hm?” An orderly, young, nervous and interrupting. Great.

  
“Do you know where you are?” Oh, _great, this_ routine.

  
“Arkham Asylum, right?”

  
“Okay, good. The year?”

  
“Two-thousand seventeen. I feel I shouldn’t have to specify common era.”

  
“That’s… fine. And your name?” At least they seem as bored with this as me, now.

  
“Edward Nygma. By the way, you kinda messed that last question up by, you know, _calling me by name when you showed up?”_

  
“Oh. Right. Well, now that that’s out of the way, do you have any health conditions we should be aware of?” I just burst out laughing. They’ve _got_ my medical documentation. Hell, they’ve got my _clothes_.

  
“Are… are you okay?” Oh god, he wasn’t joking. That wasn’t a joke. I’m seriously being asked, in _Arkham Asylum_ , if I have any health conditions they should be aware of.

  
“Uh, asthma. You’ve got my inhaler? And, anxiety? I’ve been taking escitolapram, which has been a lot better than fluoxetine was, given the almost _total_ catatonia I got with that one. I’m on twenty milligrams.” Let’s not go into the whole laundry list here, especially not the _robbing banks_ and _punching a billionaire at work_ , given they seem to have gone and forgot that.

  
“Great. I can get you an emergency refill, so you don’t miss a dose, and you can call your doctor to get him forward anything else we might need to us. How does that sound?”  
How does that sound? That sounds great. So, I go along with it. The pill is shaped different but hey, that happens from time to time, right? That’s normal. They’ve got the green sticker reading **THIS IS THE SAME MEDICATION YOU HAVE BEEN GETTING. COLOR SIZE OR SHAPE MAY APPEAR DIFFERENT** and everything. So I’ll try not to worry about that, too. What I’m not gonna stop worrying about is that when I dialed my lawyer’s number (I’m smart enough to know who you call first when things get weird: a lawyer) I didn’t get my lawyer. I didn’t get my lawyer’s wife, who is a lovely woman, by the way. She makes lemon bars that are _to die for_. No, I got some fucking MANIAC blasting his guitar into his phone. What the hell? So I tell them he’s on vacation. They ask about my clinic. I decide that I’m going to keep lying, at this point. I give them the name of some place in Brooklyn one of my friends online has complained about. They go away for a bit, scratching their heads and muttering, confused. Which is _odd_ , because I haven’t even said anything that confusing.

  
Then, it’s my turn to be confused because they start telling me that since they have no reason to keep me here, I’ve gotta be heading out by noon. They want me out on a deadline. That’s like, a complete 180 from what I’d been preparing for. So I scrap my escape plans, and wonder if I’ll ever have reason to steal the blueprints for the place, because I had a great riddle to go with it. I won’t spoil it yet, just in case. I get my clothes back, I change, I count the money in my wallet - less than I’d like, but no less than I had before, and certainly not more, like I’d hoped - and head out into the streets.  
  
So here's a fun fact about leaving an asylum: it is not, generally speaking, a good plan to run back in immediately after stepping outside yelling about how you're pretty sure they've at the very least renamed every street in sight. Not if you want to still be leaving after, anyway. So I do what any rational, highly-intelligent, possibly-mildly-concussed person would do. I pretend everything is normal. Yep, that’s _always_ been Lich Street. This here is definitely Crane Street, as opposed to say, Fisher Street. Of course I don’t say any of that out loud, but boy am I thinking it. Sarcastically, of course. That has not, in fact, always been Lich Street. Nosirree, that was Pen Street. So that’s exciting. I would be surprised if all the streets were totally different. Maybe some other city also has an Arkham Asylum, but its, you know, another city, and all the scenery is clearly and completely different. Not so, here. I recognize landmarks, but every name in sight, so far (I’m keeping a list, of course) has been different. Streets, stores, even the river has a totally different name. The first place I head is home. My apartment, evidently, is occupied by someone who, to all appearances, is not myself. Next up, work; same layout I’m used to, even owned by a rich, big name family. The same name I’ve seen it in just about all the places I’d see WayneCorp, as the evident parent company of half the businesses here. But the name’s not Wayne.  
It’s Hadou.


	2. Kurou (Overture)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Speaking of Hadou...  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv8uBVi0pIU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A: THAT WASN'T AS EXCITING AS I HOPED.  
> E: JUST GIVE IT SOME TIME.  
> A: HMPH.
> 
> -Recovered from the observation diary of Conleth Blaecleah.

“-li~. Tekeli-li~”

“Ffive more minutes…” I roll over, grasping and trying to hide from the sun’s cruel rays. I had been dreaming of something - something nice, something strange. I’d rather like to fall back asleep and get back to it, but-

“Tekeli-li!” \- no such luck. Dunsany sits up, and I tumble from its gelatinous mass onto the floor, face first. Talk about a rude awakening. I roll over once more, and begin sitting up when I realize the source of Dunsany’s agitation: the sun’s rays aren’t coming in from the high and clear angle I’d expected, Al isn’t in bed (well, wasn’t, but still isn’t) with me, and, most damning of all - today is Monday. Shit. I promised old man Armitage I’d meet him at noon, after I finished up with… Shit! My paper. I was going to start that this morning, since it’s due, uh, tonight. I know all the stuff I’m gonna put in it, but I haven’t taken the time to put it on paper, and I was going to show it to Armitage when me met up. What am I gonna say? “Yes, I know, a hune dissection is an unprecedented opportunity, and as a member of the meta-academic community, it’s my responsibility to share the knowledge I’ve gleaned with my colleagues, but, you see, I was just far too busy with romance and sex.” Yeah, that’ll go over so well, I’m sure. What time is it? Where’s my clock?! I scatter my other belongings as I frantically rifle through the wreckage of my desk from last night - which I maintain was worth it - until I find the cable of the little clock, and follow it to the business (or at least the business of telling time) end. 11:12. Okay, so I’m not late yet. I just need write about nine pages of dissertation and explanation of an exo-physical organ capable of enabling faster-than-light travel through the gulf between stars and how it functions via dimensional climbing and my opinions on whether or not we can replicate it with alchemy, shower, put clothes on, and go meet with Armitage. Gotta be at the library by noon, so that gives me about forty-seven minutes, total, to do all that. So if I can get there in like, five minutes, shower and dress in about the same time, that leaves me thirty-seven minutes to write that paper, if I start right now. So I start. This is possible, very, very technically. I can pull this off. Pen, paper, and to hell with formatting. These guys are all used to dealing with stuff written all crazy anyway, that’s like the whole body of research in the field. Ten minutes in and I’m not confident, but less stressed, at least. I’m almost totally focused - aside from the nagging feeling that Al won’t finish her bath by the time I need to be taking a shower, and there’ll be like, candles everywhere and all that fancy soap in the way - when there comes, not a rapping tapping, but a loud, insistent knock-knock-knock at my chamber door.

“What?” I pull the door open, snappish at being interrupted during this last-minute crunch which I have inflicted upon myself. Ruri, on the other side of the threshold, is rapidly shading red, and her eyes are wide with shock. For a moment I’m concerned for her wellbeing, before I remember my current state of undress. (There’s no point in putting on clothes to write, if you haven’t showered, and you want to put on clean clothes after, before you go out. It’s a waste of laundry.) I slam the door closed, and, picking my writing back up, holler through the door. “Just yell whatever you came here to say, I’m busy.”

“That… that… you.” I can hear her taking a deep steadying breath before continuing, “You do not want me yelling about this, you have neighbors!”

“Trust me, they have more important complaints.” I’ll not go into what those are, at this time, given they are, in fact, complaining for a reason or three.

“Not more important than classified information.” Fuck.

“Okay, fine, hang on, I gotta-”

“Yes you do.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I find my phone, and send Armitage a text: I am unable to make it to our meeting, for reasons I have, to be totally honest, not yet been told. Please direct any inquiries or blame to the Hadou family. While I compose this informative missive, I find the clothes scattered around the room from last night (still worth it) and put them back on. (No sense wasting clean clothes before you’ve even showered. Besides, there’s not… too much on them. It’s not like they’re crunchy or anything.)

Once I’m dressed, I let her in. She seems to have calmed down and composed herself, at least enough to do what she came here to do. I’ve gotta admire that level of focus. I sit back down at my desk and get back to work, waving for her to start talking.

A moment passes. Another. The scratch of my pen on paper is the only sound, so I look up at her. She’s gone pale. Absolutely ghost white. Her eyes are glazed, staring at something beyond me.

“Al, put some clothes on.” I guess I should have seen this coming. It’s that kind of day, after all. “Well? What’s up?” I wonder if skin can tan from whiplash. Red, normal, white, normal…

“Something bypassed one of firewalls.” She’s recovered, again, and her focus is back on… tech support, apparently.

“Well, uh, I don’t recall installing any firewalls, so I’m not sure how this is my fault.” Tech support I was never hired to provide, and am definitely not responsible for. So that’s a relief.

“I’m not worried about the firewall, I’m worried about the person who bypassed it. They had local access, or they wouldn’t have been able to get as deep in as they did without being caught. It just wouldn’t be possible from a remote location.”

“Yeah?” I don’t think I like where she’s going with this.

“That means that someone with the means and motive to hack one of our datacenters is here.”

“Here?”

“In Arkham.”


	3. On The Street

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First try at hacking magic went better than it really ought've.

I course, mark, and fall. I kill and save and do not care. What am I?

 

Well, apparently this _whole_ town is called Arkham. Which, if I’m being blunt, and I feel I can be, fits. The whole town is like the loony bin spilled over into the streets. People don’t pay much attention to the ubiquitous gargoyles, in case they recognize them somewhere else. They still worry about ghosts stealing kids. Not as a way to scare kids into staying in at night, but in a _very literal way, they are worried that a **ghost** will **steal** their child._ And that’s a normal fear! But at the _same time_ , the metropolitan area of the city is an amazing powerhouse of industry and science and fucking **magic**. Yeah, they have _alchemical_ _foundries_ , pumping out medicine based on ridiculous shit like the doctrine of signatures. There’s this anti-depressant on the market based on a cosmic silhouette of sunlight and puppies or whatever, and it seems to work? Like, holy fuck, while I remain aware of the many and varied dangers I am exposed to in what I am choosing to assume is an alternate reality adjacent to our own, in which I have no contacts, employment, or even actual identity, I’m still pretty fucking psyched about a significant improvement to my baseline contentment. And all these magic GMO labs or whatever, they’re all owned by the Hadou Conglomerate.

 

As for good news: they didn’t find the hidden thumb drive in my wallet, so while I may have very little money - which isn’t that big of a change, if we’re being honest - I _do_ have an excellent method for getting some more. Now, I’m opposed, generally speaking, to stealing from the poor. It’s cruel, it’s rarely deserved, and above all else, it’s _incredibly_ inefficient. The rich, on the other hand, generally speaking, hardly notice. Especially companies. Sure, they get mad if they catch you, especially if you work there, but a lot of the time, you can just set _someone else up for the fall and then fire them_. Or something like that. What do I know, anyway.

 

The point is, pretty much _every_ company out there is doing some pretty horrendous shit to someone, somewhere, so stealing from a big company is basically justice. No one appreciates it, but they’re just jealous, I think. They get mad at me for doing what they couldn’t, because they only reason they never tried was just because they’d convinced themselves that it wasn’t possible and then I went and did it and proved they’re just not that great, really, and now they’re blaming _me_. It’s ridiculous.

 

Even _if_ a particular company isn’t an evil corporation hellbent on the subjugation of their fellow humans via debt and legalese, they can probably stand to be knocked down a peg. Now, I don’t mean like, tiny companies that have a _single store_ they run out of their barely-converted garage, or family restaurants. Not family _owned_ , like all those huge monsters say they are - everything is family owned, because everyone has at least one relative, statistically speaking. But a restaurant - a single restaurant - run by a single family, stealing from _them_ is just in bad taste. They’re just doing their best, you know?

 

Really, the best targets are uh, so as not to imply that I have, in fact, relieved one of those listed of their exploitatively earned cash, let’s make one up. Like, say, _FloorMart_. Suppose I go into my local franchise of FloorMart, and, smiling as I go, walk over to wherever the breakers are, and I fiddle about with some wires, and ice, and at the end of the night, just before they start to close, their power _just so happens_ to go out.

 

No power, no alarms, no electronic locks, and, if you’re lucky, none of those steel folding mega-baby gates, you know that come down from the ceiling like a collapsible guillotine. Those. So, later on, you waltz - not literally waltz, just like, as a metaphor for “moving with ease or grace” - in, and take - to be clear, you do _not_ dance into the building, people _say_ that, but only to try to insult you - so you waltz in and - they think that dancing implies femininity and that’s worth mocking, which is wrong on a multitude of levels, especially since waltzes have always been traditionally intended for courtship and could be danced by any two people intending to fuck, regardless of gender - waltz in, and take the cash out of the registers - yes, someone has to _lead_ in a waltz, but that has more to do with themes of dominance and submission than gender, and since someone has to lead a waltz, a waltz danced alone, _for whatever reason_ , is danced as the leader, so they can’t even imply it means I’m weak or something - the registers _and_ the safes. Then, on your way back out, you put a very, very thin usb drive into one of the ports at a point of sale, ideally wherever they do customer service. When they find their lack of cash, they’ll have to go get some from the bank - which means transferring funds between the store’s accounts, which means using their computer, which means starting up your little toy, which records all the transferred data, and beams it to your handy-dandy smart phone of choice. Then you take that, log into the stores account, bing bang boom, you’ve robbed a store from your local library.

 

And then, somehow, they get wind of it, and you’re being chased down an alley by the police, and you’re running, and they’re yelling that they’re gonna taze you, and you’re _freaking out_ and your brain goes into that “woah, shit, dude we might actually _die_ here, let’s take plenty of time to really think that through” mode, where everything, especially yourself, seems to slow down. And you see a discarded tire iron and a fire hydrant and you _probably_ dislocate your shoulder, but you hit those cops in their stupid faces, and their tazers go off into the puddle and you somehow get away.

 

So how’d _you_ end up in the sewers, anyway?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NaN: AHAHA, DID YOU SEE HIS FACE?  
> ∞: MHM! I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD BE FUN!
> 
> -Recovered from the observation journal of Conleth Blaecleah.


End file.
